Because fatherhood has a darkside

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We’re here and now, but will we ever be again
‘Cause I have found
All that shimmers in this world is sure to fade
Away again

It’s true. The beauty fades. But not the fucking memories. Those are still as shiny as ever. Fuck, let’s face it. They’re blindingly bright. We try to stuff them away. Hide them, pretend they aren’t there. We put them in little black boxes in the back of our mind. We throw away the fucking key. But just try, just try to close your eyes for one fucking second. Do you know what those little bastards do? They flood your whole fucking head as if they were there the whole time. The good ones and the bad ones. All there, in our dreams in our thoughts, just parading about. They almost mock us.

I remember. Sweet fucking lord do I remember. But what are we told to do as adults? Put those away. Those silly dreams, those hopes. Those are for little kids. Those times are behind you. You can’t have them anymore. Adults aren’t supposed to play with those things. Those dreams. Those happy times. The times when nothing else in the world mattered. When we didn’t have a care in the world. When it was clear who you loved and who loved you. And you could be with them all time. Doing whatever the fuck you wanted to. But more than that, whatever you were doing was always exactly what you wanted to do, because they were there. And when they were there that was all that mattered. Everything else was incidental, immaterial, just a fortuitous happenstance.

But as I said before, beauty fades. Sometimes that person fades, sometimes they disappear all together. And sometimes, just fucking sometimes, that person is ripped from your life and taken away. And day after day you wait for the cruel fucking joke to end. But it doesn’t fucking end. And every day you continue to wake up with the gaping fucking hole in your heart and no matter what the fuck you fill it with it never gets any fucking smaller. And those memories. they never get any dimmer. If anything they get brighter, like a super nova. The memories just keep exploding into your mind. It’s been 11 fucking years and they still sit there, taunting me. But like a super nova if I reach out to grab them all they do is burn. Every time I think I can reach out and touch them the just get hotter and hotter and I shirk away, clutching my singed hand.

But then it gets worse. You know what happens to a super nova. It explodes and then collapses again. Those fucking memories. They explode and then they collapse again. And they’re denser than anything in the universe. They turn into a black hole. A thing so heavy and so fucking dense that nothing can escape its pull. Not even light, not even happiness. That black hole of memories that just sits in that giant spot in your heart. And it’s all you can do to not sink into them and be lost forever to them. They just pull at you constantly. Always fucking pulling. You start to resent them, before the inevitable. The event horizon, you begin to cross it, and you become lost forever to the memories.

I remember. I remember every movie, every meal, every ray of sun, every grain of sand on every beach we sat upon. I remember every wave we caught, every wipe out, every board we ever broke. I remember every dive we ever sauntered into, every beer we ever drank, every shot we ever swallowed, even the shots we lit on fire. I remember every step we took, every mile we ran, every finishing tape we broke. I remember every boulevard we cruised, every woman we tried to pick up. Every one that turned us down, every one that said yes. I remember every 3 am breakfast at Denny’s, after every club we ever went to. I remember the High Roller (inside joke, I’ll explain it someday). I remember. I remember every second, every moment where we lit up each other’s solar systems. Like two suns colliding. You were beautiful. You were the brightest thing in my life. You were a god damn super nova and you were so fucking beautiful. You weren’t just my world, you were my star. God dammit, and now you’re gone and all I fucking have is your fucking black hole of memories.

And the tears. I have the tears, soaking into my shirt, being sopped up by another fucking box of tissues. This is all I really have.

The name of the song is actually Creep, and it’s by Stone Temple Pilots. I will cut a bitch if they say it’s by Nirvana. It doesn’t even sound like Kurt if you’ve ever really listened to it. And no, Nirvana never covered it. So fuck the fuck off if you think otherwise.

I’m half the man I used to be…

So I was out running the other day. I was about 3/4 of the way through what was supposed to be a 2 hour run. It was going great. I was at the exact pace I wanted. I was on the way home. All signs pointed to this being a successful run. The path was smooth and paved. There were no uneven conditions. I felt really good. I was in my best form in months. My feet were landing very well. Everything was perfect. I had just passed another runner as I was coming out of the woods. I got about ten paces in front of the person I just passed and then it happened. SNAP! I heard the bone crack. And then instant fucking pain. Severe fucking pain. I could barely put any weight on it. I stumbled along for a few more strides. I knew it was broken at that point. I stumbled for a few more strides and I found my relief. There was a bench. I dragged myself over to it. I sat down and considered my options. I had no phone, nobody else was coming along the trail. I stood to see if I could walk. It ached with the pain of a thousand needles for every ounce of pressure I put on it. It was bad, really bad, and I knew it. There was no way I could get home on my own. Fuck, I was fucked. And shit, there goes my marathon training.

I had been training for a marathon. Training was coming along so well. I had been losing weight and gaining speed. All that shit was over now. FUCK! Back to reality. How do I get myself the fuck out of this decidedly bad situation? I thought about my location. The path wasn’t too far off the road, I could try to flag a car down. It was pretty early in the morning, there weren’t many cars. I doubt any of them would want to stop for hobbling, sweaty, scantily clad runner waving them down in the wee hours of a Saturday morning. I decided to stumble along a little further to see which cross street I was at. Maybe there was a business near by. Then it hit me. The hospital was very close. I wondered if I could crawl that far. I sat down again. I took off my shoe and sock. It was swollen and red. I feel the area where I hear the snap. It wasn’t good. It was definitely broken. Any former Boy Scout, such as myself, could tell that. I started my limp drag. Before too long I could see the hill to the hospital.

How did I end up like this? It wasn’t to long ago that I was in pretty good fucking shape. I was a rather competitive runner for the group I was in. 50 pounds and 15 years I guess doesn’t do the body good. I almost got down and crawled as I trudged up the hill. My leg was hanging behind me like the shattered ego I was clutching to with dear life. I had to make it up this fucking hill. Who the fuck puts an emergency room at the top of a hill? After was seemed to be several painful hours (really just minutes), I could see the emergency room doors. It looked empty inside. That was a good sign. I could see the nurses moving around. One of them definitely saw me as I tried to finish my trek up Mt. Everest. She didn’t bother to come out and help me (That was not a good sign). I finally made it to the doors. I fell inside them and pulled myself to the desk.

“How can I help you today sir?”

“I think I broke my foot.”

I pulled myself to a relatively standing position. Still no offer for help. We conversed a bit over my injury and I got checked in. I was asked to go three windows down. I just fucking stared at the nurse with my jaw open. I started a one footed hop with all the pitiful stance I could muster. Another nurse called out.

“Would you like a wheelchair sir?”

“That would be awesome.” I practically cried. I really thought tears were going to appear.

They got me a wheelchair and I ambled over to the proper window. It turned out that I did not need to wait in the emergency room. The sent me upstairs to urgent care. This time a nurse pushed my wheelchair along. This was much better service than they started out with. Upstairs in the urgent care they finally determined that it was indeed broken foot. It was kind of a funny realization to see just how fragile our bodies can be sometimes. I saw the X-rays. It was just a tiny little fracture along the fifth metatarsal. It didn’t even go all the way through the bone. They stuck a splint on it, prescribed some top-notch pain pills, and sent me out the door with a referral to an orthopedist.

Turns out it’s not just any orthopedist. It’s the group of orthopedists that help treat our men’s and women’s professional soccer teams as well as the national teams. This set of doctors is top-notch. This makes me happy. I make my way in on my crutches. By the way, have you ever used crutches. They fucking suck. They hurt your armpits, they take a shit ton of effort and energy to use. I hate fucking crutches. The orthopedist takes more X-rays and comes to the same conclusion that the urgent care doctor came to. Fracture along the fifth metatarsal. It’s what they refer to as a Jones fracture. If it had been higher up, closer to the toe, it would have been considered a stress fracture. If it had been lower and closer to the joint leading to the ankle it would have been called another type of fracture.

Now there’s bad news and worse news, with a smidgen of good news. I get a boot, and the splint comes off. A really cool boot with one of those air pumps in it so I can pretend I’m reliving my childhood with a pair of Nike Air Force 180 Pump. I can almost hear David Robinson pitching the commercial right now. A bonus with the boot is that I can take it off to shower, so I don’t have to bathe with a bag around my leg. I also get a kneeling wheel walker. Goodbye crutches. That’s where the good news ends mostly. 3-4 weeks of no weight-bearing activity. Then 3-4 weeks of walking with the boot. After that, if everything is healing well, 6-8 weeks of physical therapy. All told it could be 4-5 months before I am fully healed and can start to run again. Even at the earliest I would only have about 2 months of training time available if I were to still do the marathon. That would be two months of training starting from scratch. Well that’s $90 down the drain. I most definitely won’t be doing the marathon. At least the orthopedist was optimistic about two things. I will probably be able to run again. I most likely will not need surgery.

But really, let’s face it. I’ll never be as fast as I was before. I’ll never be close to my desired weight. If I’m lucky I might race again someday. I guess it’s true. I’m half the man I used to be.

Feelin’ uninspired…

Yep that would be me.

Everybody run… Bobby’s got a gun…

Actually I don’t. I don’t believe in guns. So you can relax about that. I just like the lyric.

Don’t we all pretend in one way or another? We pretend we like each other. We update each other through statuses, posts, blogs. We pretend that these things are important. We pretend that other people care about them just to make ourselves feel better. We plus, we like, we share, we favorite, we re-tweet, we up vote. All just to pretend that we give a damn, or so that we can pretend others give a damn about us. It’s tiring, some days I’m just not sure I want to do it anymore. I mean I will, if only because writing is one of my outlets and I need it like Sonny needs Cher. But fuck all if I’m going to pretend more than I have to anymore. I’m going to write my heart. I’m going to say what’s on my mind, I’m going to do what the fuck I want and I’m going to fucking enjoy myself. What the fuck is the point of being an adult if you can’t do what the fuck you want to?

Keep you in the dark
And so it all began

Send in your skeletons
Sing as their bones go marching in… again
The need you buried deep…

Like the need to write, the need to be myself. The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten I’ve failed miserably to apply as I should have. I was on the verge of going to college. You can imagine a snot nosed brat all of 17 riding high on a full scholarship to a school that was over 3,000 miles away. I was the shit, I knew I was the shit, and what’s worse was that I didn’t hesitate to make sure that everybody else knew I was the fucking shit. So about a month before I left a friend of the family gave me the once over and offered up their advice for going to college. She said, “Be yourself. College is one of the last times that you will get to be introduced to a brand new group of people who don’t know you, have never heard of you, and have no expectations of you. Right now everybody has an idea or notion of who you are and how you should act. Sometimes you act a certain way just to please these people. With college you don’t have to do that. You can be yourself and nobody will tell you that they expected you to be a different person. All they will know is what you present and then they will have to either accept you or reject you. If they accept you, great, if they don’t that’s okay too. Somebody will like you for who you are, and then you won’t have to pretend to be somebody different while you’re around them. Pretending gets tiring after a while. Don’t set yourself up to have to pretend all the time. Be yourself.”

I wish I fucking knew everything I thought I knew at 17. I listened to her, but I blew her off mostly. It makes me sad now.

The secrets that you keep are ever ready…

Oh do I have secrets. So many fucking secrets. I keep them. I coddle them. I make sure that they are close to my heart and I guard them. Only letting them out when I need to use them for my own awful fucking selfish purposes. In general I seem like a nice guy. But the truth is I’m selfish. Some days I feel guilty about that. Most days I don’t.

Are you ready?
I’m finished making sense
Done pleading ignorance
That whole defense

Spinning infinity, boy
The wheel is spinning me
It’s never-ending, never-ending
Same old story

What if I say I’m not like the others? …

I’m not like the others, I’m not like anybody else. Yes we all have similarities, such as we’re all human, we all bleed, we’re all special and unique. But because of that we’re all the same. It’s a lot like being a damn snow flake. No two are alike. But they’re all the same. At their basic core their just icy little bits of beauty. But when you put them all together they’re a devastating pile of frosty hell. And they all fucking hate you. At the very least they’re ambivalent toward you. They don’t give a fuck what your life plans are. They don’t care what you want out of life. All they do is whatever the fuck they want to do, which is usually making your life a miserable fucking mess. You plow the assholes out of the way and just keep falling back in the path. Because that’s what they fucking want to do. Well I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to do.

What if I say I’m not just another one of your plays? …

You hear that world. I’m not your fucking whipping boy anymore!
You’re the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender? …

At least I’d like to think that’s true.

In time or so I’m told
I’m just another soul for sale… oh, well …

Seriously I’m up for sale. For enough money I’d promote fucking anything. I have no problem selling out. I’d laugh all the way to fucking bank.

The page is out of print
We are not permanent…

The number one cause of dying, so I’m told, is being born.

We’re temporary, temporary
Same old story

I’m the voice inside your head
You refuse to hear
I’m the face that you have to face
Mirrored in your stare
I’m what’s left, I’m what’s right
I’m the enemy
I’m the hand that will take you down
Bring you to your knees…

No I’m not, but sometimes I do say what other people are only comfortable with thinking to themselves.

So who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you? …

Seriously, who are you? Whoever the fuck it is I fully encourage you to go be that fucking person. Life is too fucking short to be anything else.

Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend

What if I say I’m not like the others?
(Keep you in the dark)
What if I say I’m not just another one of your plays?
(You know they all… pretend)
You’re the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender?

Hold me now. I’m six feet from the edge and I’m thinking… maybe six feet ain’t so far down.

We’ve all had bad days. Some of us have had a really bad days. Me? I’ve had a lot of really bad days. Most of the time I’m okay with it all. But sometimes I stand on the edge of the cliff or the railing of the bridge, literally, and I think about moving just a few more inches further. It would be easy. I never have of course and I doubt I ever would. But I fucking think about it. I also think of just walking away from my life. I think about picking up the next pretty skirt that walks by and just driving far far away. No calling anybody to tell them where I’ve gone. No leaving a note or a number, just disappearing like so many magicians before me.

So how do I cope? How do I back up and make sure that the direction I move is one towards relative physical safety? I wish I had an answer for you. I really fucking do. We deserve answers. Especially when we feel the way we do sometimes. I have yet to find them. Even when I believed in a god, I rarely found solace. If anything I only found more questions. But maybe we aren’t meant to find answers. Maybe the point of life is to keep asking questions.

I’ve found that finding new questions to ask has given me a reason, often, to keep going. I think if I had all the answers life would be pretty fucking boring. So how do I find new questions? Well, that’s the hard part sometimes. I run, and my surroundings during my runs usually provide me with a multitude of new curiosities. I also read a lot. Reading I think keeps me going if only because I think of all the unfinished books out there that deserve to be read. I can’t help but feel a sense fulfillment when I get to the end of one of those books. I can’t help but think that somehow the world, if not myself, is just a little bit better because I read that story.

The final mechanism that has kept yours truly alive these many years is music. I love music in many varied forms. Ray Charles once noted that “Writing music is hard. You have to say in two and a half minutes what most movies take two and half hours to say.” I guess that’s why I like music so much. You have to get very creative very fast for your song to not sound like every other song that’s ever been written.

Speaking of writing, I guess that’s another thing I do. When you take everything I’ve described above you get the birth of this blog. I have other written work but I felt I needed a place that I could write and share some deeper stuff. More importantly I felt I needed a place I could swear. I could do it on my other blog, but it’s grown to a point where I just don’t feel it would fit on my posts there. So that’s what this blog is. It’s a raw version of me. It’s posts inspired by my darker thoughts, music, and my love of swearing, lots of fucking swearing.